


The Complexity of Crushes

by HobbitSpaceCase



Category: The Good Place (TV)
Genre: Eleanor contemplates what they have learned, F/F, POV Eleanor, Post Episode: s3e4 The Snowplow, and discovers that she does have a crush on Tahani, and doesn't have a crush on Chidi, and starring Eleanor's inability to remember names, and wonders if she's any better than she was, it's just Eleanor realizing how she feels, no romance in the fic, the humans know about the Good Place and the Bad Place, with some help from Michael
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-13
Updated: 2018-10-13
Packaged: 2019-08-01 16:07:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,880
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16287671
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HobbitSpaceCase/pseuds/HobbitSpaceCase
Summary: Chidi was her friend.  Quite possibly the best friend she'd ever had.  He was nerdy, and ridiculous, and kind of adorable if she thought about it, but he was also dating Simone.  Not only was Simone also one of Eleanor's friends, she and Chidi weregoodtogether.  Eleanor couldn't imagine any version of any world where she would have been better for Chidi than Simone.  Chidi hadn't been able to imagine it either, judging by the shock on his face when Morris dropped that particular bit of news.No, Eleanor would be better off datingTahanithan trying to get in Chidi's pants.





	The Complexity of Crushes

In all her life, Eleanor had never been so lost. She didn't know what to think.

She and all her best friends were supposed to have died two years ago. The big experiment Chidi had put together had all been orchestrated by an ex-demon and a not-robot to bring them together, because he was worried that his experiment to bring them back to life and see if they could be better people wasn't working. If not for him, it probably wouldn't have worked for Eleanor, at least. She was born an Arizona trashbag, and she was right on track to die an Arizona trashbag.

And in another life, she _had_ died an Arizona trashbag.

That wasn't the only bombshell the ex-demon pretending to be a bartender, Mitchel, had dropped on the group, however. Turns out the only reason Tahani had run into her Hemsworth fiancé was because the not-robot was in love with Jason, and didn't want him hooking up with Tahani. It was almost crazy enough to be exactly what she might have expected, if she had ever bothered thinking about Jason having a soulmate.

Speaking of soulmates: apparently in a good chunk of the afterlife scenarios the demon had run before he decided to stop torturing them and start helping them into the real Good Place (a place that actually existed, holy fucking shit), she had been paired up with Chidi as a soulmate. Had even fallen in love with him for real, in more than one reboot. That situation was crazier than Jason falling for an all-knowing supercomputer.

Chidi was her friend. Quite possibly the best friend she'd ever had. He was nerdy, and ridiculous, and kind of adorable if she thought about it, but he was also dating Simone. Not only was Simone also one of Eleanor's friends, she and Chidi were _good_ together. Eleanor couldn't imagine any version of any world where she would have been better for Chidi than Simone. Chidi hadn't been able to imagine it either, judging by the shock on his face when Morris dropped that particular bit of news.

No, Eleanor would be better off dating _Tahani_ than trying to get in Chidi's pants.

They were all still in Tahani's heirBNB, the morning after the party coming up, and none of them had been able to leave after what they'd seen and heard. Tahani had graciously offered them all the use of spare rooms, but they had ended up instead clustering together in one of the enormous sitting rooms, Tahani waving her fiancé back to bed when he came to check on them with the excuse that she just wanted one more night to talk to her brainy bunch friends.

God, even that name had come from another demon, apparently. Because, oh yeah. Trevor hadn't been an obnoxiously cheerful human lacking any and all social skills. He had been a demon trying to sabotage Matthew's experiment and ensure that the four experiment humans ended up back in the Bad Place, being tortured for eternity. She shuddered at the thought. No wonder she'd hated him so much. If hell was full of douchebags like that, she really didn't want to end up there.

But apparently, now that they all knew that there could be paradise waiting for good behavior, they weren't eligible for points anymore. Only completely selfless behavior earned points, and so long as they knew there was a reward after, their actions couldn't be totally selfless.

Unsurprisingly, Chidi took that news the easiest of all of them. She sighed as her thoughts turned to her ethics professor/best friend/sometimes-fake-soulmate again. He'd spouted off a number of passages from books she hadn't read and a few she remembered paging through. One of the quotes she'd even been able to finish for him, earning a blindingly proud smile that just made her guts twist up with how much she _wasn't_ interested in him romantically. His pride in her growth as a student made her feel stupidly warm and happy, but that was it. She wanted him to be happy, but she didn't feel any burning need to be the one to make that happen in his personal life.

And after Tahani and Jason had both dozed off in the wee hours of the morning, exhausted from the emotional roller coaster they'd been put through that night, he had tried to talk to her.

"Eleanor," he'd said, his voice wavering with the uncertainty she was used to hearing whenever he was facing a complicated moral dilemma. She had looked at his face and known immediately what he was going to say.

"It's okay," man, she'd said, cutting him off with a forced smile. "I know Mikey said we were "soulmates" or whatever, but that was both fake and in _literal_ hell. You and Simone are cute, and you're both my friends, and I have _no_ intention of trying to break that up. I promise." In spite of the pain in her chest, her smile was more genuine by the end of her speech. Simone hadn't been too far off the mark the previous evening; Eleanor did fear being alone, and sometimes she had been jealous of what her two friends had together. But she meant every word she said, because apparently being experimented on by an ex-demon and saved from death really _did_ make her a better person.

Old Eleanor would have had no problem fucking up Chidi's relationship with Simone.

Old Eleanor was a total bitch.

Chidi had smiled back at her, relief clear in his face. He was always so expressive and easy to read, so she hadn't had any trouble seeing that her words were exactly what he'd wanted to hear. "Thank you, Eleanor," he said, and she shot him a thumbs up and threw a pillow at him.

"Get some sleep, nerd," she'd said. "Your eye-bags are growing eye-bags, and Simone might force-feed you sleeping pills if you ever pull an all-nighter again. I'm joking." She tacked on, when he eyes widened in fright. "She cares about you too much to do that without asking, but she will worry."

That had done the trick. That, and the ridiculous softness of the couches, pillows, and blankets in Tahani's fancy-schmancy heirBNB. Tahani herself had even passed out on one of the couches, stretched out like some kind of beautiful diva in the soft floral pajamas she had changed into before joining them to talk. "Honestly," Eleanor had mumbled to no one before leaving the scene, "those pj's should be illegal. That girl's _curves_ should be illegal."

Now, Eleanor was wandering the hallways, unable to join the others in putting her own restless brain to sleep. She paused outside an alcove when she heard whispered voices. After a moment of listening in, Eleanor determined that the voices clearly belonged to the ex-demon, Martin, and his computer sidekick, Judy or whatever.

"Hey," she said, popping around the corner with a too-bright smile and an awkward wave. "How's the interfering in the lives of your human experiments going?"

Janine and Morgan stared at her with wide eyes. "Oh, you're still awake!" the ex-demon said, matching her fake cheer with his own. "Shouldn't you be asleep? You are on earth now, you know. Can't go forgetting those important bodily functions like sleep!"

Eleanor raised an eyebrow at him. "Okay, pal," she said slowly. "I know sleep is important. Can I talk to you instead?"

The not-robot lady looked between them. "I'm going to check on Jason," she chirped, and darted away.

Eleanor squished herself into the alcove next to Mark, in the space the computer lady had just vacated. The ex-demon, who still changed out of his caterer's outfit in favor of gray slacks and an off-white button-down, stared at her. "I told you all the important details," he said, after a few moments of awkward silence.

"Yeah," Eleanor replied. "I'm sure you think you did, as someone who isn't human and doesn't have to deal with messy human _emotional_ bullshit. But I wanted to ask you something."

"Is it about Chidi?" the guy asked, and man his voice could be surprisingly gentle and understanding for a demon.

"Kind of," she muttered back. May as well get that topic out of the way first, she supposed.

"Don't worry," Mason said, making an aborted move to pat her on the shoulder. "He'll come around. You two always find each other. Just because he's currently dating someone else doesn't mean you won't end up together in the end!"

A grimace twisted Eleanor's face. "Dude, I don't _want_ him to break up with Simone for me," she said firmly. "Maybe dead-me was in love with him, but alive-me is just happy to be his friend."

Mario's brows furrowed in confusion. "Look, buddy," Eleanor said, struggling to find the words she was never good at saying, "in this... bad place, of yours, didn't I ever fall in love with anyone else? Or like, get mad-hot crushes on anyone else?"

A speculative gleam entered the ex-demon's eye. "I thought it was just a fluke," he said, tapping his chin in thought, "but yes, there was one time you fell in love with someone else."

"Okay," Eleanor said, encouraged, "so what happened then?"

"It was the reboot where I paired you and Tahani together as soulmates."

Eleanor's eyebrows met her hairline as she stared at Maurice. "Wait wait wait," she said, "me and _Tahani_?"

"Yes," Marshall said, still looking at her with that annoyingly speculative gleam. "You do seem to consistently develop an attraction to her, as well. It is just usually overridden by your relationship with Chidi, if things progress that far."

Eleanor couldn't believe what she was hearing. Sure, Tahani was gorgeous, she would have had to be blind not to notice those long legs, or that perfectly flowing hair, or that smooth brown skin. The woman's body was to die for. But she was also arrogant, and irritating, and smug, and totally full of herself.

Although, Eleanor realized with a start, Tahani hadn't really been those things in a long time. Even at the beginning, she had always tried to be polite, in her own totally over the top Tahani way. She constantly made Eleanor aware of how poor and unkempt she was, but at the same time she never did it on purpose, and would have probably been horrified to know that was how Eleanor felt. Last winter when Tahani had planned to hook up with Jason, it had made something ugly squirm in Eleanor's gut even as she ignored it. That same ugly thing had been shadowing her through the whole party to celebrate Tahani leaving with her new fiancé, but she had just put that down to her sadness over the ending of the brainy bunch.

In retrospect, Eleanor had to admit she was really bad at examining her own emotions. _Especially_ when they meant she might like someone.

"Oh fuck," Eleanor breathed. "I totally do have a crush on Tahani."

Michael smiled at her. "I suppose that's not such a shocking outcome, after all," he said, and urged her out of the alcove. "Now, go get your girl."

And Eleanor Shellstrop, Arizona trashbag and all-around awful person turned slightly okay person, did.


End file.
